Ross A. Laird

The rates of success for contemporary addictions treatment are miserable. The vast majority of people who undergo it, whether at a treatment center or in the so-called recovery movement — AA, NA and their companion abbreviations — fail to improve (though if they keep trying, their chances of success increase). Those who enroll in a program do about as well as those who do not. Sometimes they do better. In any given attempt, most addicts who try to improve their situation do not achieve success. And within any given year, something like fifty thousand people in North America die of drug and alcohol use. This number does not include deaths from nicotine addiction, which claims the lives of half of all smokers, or from obesity (addiction to unhealthy eating), which will soon be the leading cause of preventable death in North America.

Ray Charles — acclaimed as one of the twentieth century’s foundational musicians — died this week. Some of the retrospective news items, on TV and on the web, noted his 20-year battle with heroin addiction. Many people were unaware of this, and were surprised that such a hard core addiction was part of the life of a man who appeared to be so humane, humorous, and self-aware.

But musicians not addicted to heroin were the exception in the age of Ray Charles’ ascension. Almost all the emergent jazz and blues musicians of the fifties — Miles Davis (and most of his band), Bill Evans, Thelonius Monk — were addicted to heroin at one time or another. Evans, perhaps the greatest pianist of the twentieth century, died of heroin and cocaine addiction. Charles managed to catch it earlier, after his arrest at the Boston airport.

The other night, in one of my counselling classes, we had a small discussion about whether marijuana should be legalized. Many people thought so: after all, pot seems basically harmless. Nobody overdoses or gets violent on the stuff. But in…

I live in Vancouver, where smoking a joint is part of everyday life for almost everybody who owns a mountain bike and an iPod. So my recent posts about the dangers of marijuana are not likely to go down well…

For those addicts genuinely seeking a resolution to their struggle, I’ll tell you the great secret up front: find something else to be addicted to, something healthier. That’s all. Addiction is not a light switch, on or off; it’s a…

More news this weekend about increasing trends in drug and alcohol use: in Scotland, in Japan, and among Australian kids.

Addiction evolves in societies, particularly among cultures experiencing stress. And it begins developmentally, in families and in the community. But research trends both in substance use are moving away from developmental questions. Researchers are less interested in childhood development than they once were. Genetic and biochemical factors now dominate the research landscape.

This morning, on Citytv’s Breakfast Television, I spoke with Shane Foxman, host and aspirant non-smoker, about strategies for understanding and dealing with nicotine addiction. We talked about four basic strategies:

• Find support: someone to talk to, a group of like-minded quitters, friends or family who are capable of empathy, patience, and kindness. Support is the only recovery strategy consistently correlated with success.

• Understand the emotional function of the addiction. What role does it play in your life? How does it fulfill a particular need (stress management, relaxation, a social lubricant), and how can you satisfy that same need in other ways?

• Find a substitute addiction, one that’s healthier. I’ve spoken about this elsewhere on my website. Successfully recovered addicts find new obsessions: spirituality or exercise or meditation or kayaking or whatever. Find something to love that gives you the same hit as smoking. Eventually it will give you a better hit. You’ll find it, if only you give yourself the chance.

• Accept that relapse may be part of your process. Most people relapse multiple times (as many as 10, 12 or more), and it’s healthier to acknowledge the role of relapse than to berate yourself for being weak. Recovery is not about will power but readiness, and sometimes that readiness takes a while to develop. If you’re not quite there, don’t worry about it. Just keep trying. Eventually the momentum of your desire to quit will overcome the inertia of the addiction.

And finally, stay connected. Isolation is the sure route to failure. Shane is organizing a collaborative quitting circle: consider getting involved (send an email to the show if you want to join the group or offer your feedback).

For me, one of the most troubling aspects of the addiction conversation is society is the extent to which people wish to assign blame. The user, the family, society: someone must be at fault. This reflects a general tendency toward…

As I’ve been working on the new book, I’ve been making little notes about approaches to recovery and healing: for parents, siblings, spouses. Here are a few:

The various tricks, systems and strategies all distil down to one thing: focus on yourself. You cannot change the habits or behavior of anyone else. If you are a professional counselor or social service worker, focus on empathy and clarity. Understand that the various recovery strategies for substance use (motivational interviewing, medications, cognitive behavioral treatment) are simply means of making contact, nothing more.

If you are the parent of an adult addict, work on your own emotional management — your anger, your disbelief, your fear. Stop lecturing your child about their addiction. Offer them resources — books, counseling fees, a safe place to get away from the clamor and grit of the addiction lifestyle — but offer these as investments, not conditions. Offer them freely, as open-ended gifts, without the requirement that your child redeem such gifts by discontinuing substance use. If your child is actively using, you will lose any negotiation involving abstinence. Accept this.

Understand that the choices your child is making are beyond their conscious ability to manage. Addiction hijacks the personality (though not the spirit). Express your love, ask how you can help, and acknowledge that you cannot make your child stop using. If you try hard enough to make them stop, you will lose them (though teenagers are a special case, and require special care; the book devotes a chapter to them). As a parent, your task has always been to create and sustain the safe harbor. Keep doing this, and wait for the time that you may be needed.

If you are a spouse, take your partner for a walk — along the beach, in the morning, making it plain beforehand that you have important business to discuss. Ask them to simply listen. Share your feelings, your fears, your struggle. Do this succinctly, in no more than a few minutes, and conclude by asking for the one thing you need. Maybe it’s couples counseling, or treatment for your spouse, or perhaps only a willingness to try. Whatever it is, make a firm deadline by which something must be done. (A week? A month? Certainly not more than a season).

Make it clear what you will do if the deadline is not met: go for counseling on your own, for example (more drastic action, like leaving the relationship, is generally unwise unless several authentic attempts at healing have already been tried). Be prepared to follow through: bluffing may work in poker, but not in addictions. You can’t effectively demand that your spouse stop using, but you can give them a fixed period in which to choose.

If you are addicted — to any one of the infinite number of substances and behaviors available in the modern world — start to pay attention to the corrosiveness of your addictive experiences. Enter into the labyrinth of your emotional life.

Call someone who loves you. Say that you’re in trouble, that you need support. Someone to listen. Forget the history for now — just for today — and ask them to do the same. Stop reading and do it now.

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